Town Meeting voters to consider $6.2m budget plan

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Voters here will consider a $6.22 million municipal budget proposal at the May 20 Town Meeting.

The proposed spending plan includes employee raises and $600,000 for road upgrades. No layoffs are contemplated after several previous rounds of staff reductions, including two job cuts last year in Public Works.

As proposed, the budget is 2.6 percent greater than this year’s plan, which runs through June 30. However, the 2014-15 budget that takes effect July 1 is not projected to increase the town’s share of the local property tax rate.

Tax impacts from the MSAD 35 budget, which voters must approve in a June 10 referendum, are still not clear. That budget has not been finalized.

“This is a no-frills budget,” Town Manager Perry Ellsworth said Tuesday of the municipal proposal.

He said higher operations expenses, higher insurance costs and 3-percent raises for the town’s non-union workers account for much of the $158,949 budget increase.

The current police budget proposal does not include raises, although contract negotiations with the union representing seven full-time officers and four full-time dispatchers are ongoing.

The existing two-year union contract, which includes .5 percent annual raises, expires June 30. When asked if police would receive the same 3 percent bump as town staff, Ellsworth declined to comment, citing the ongoing contract talks.

In addition to the $600,00 for roadwork, the town also is planning $936,000 in capital expenses next year for new equipment and facilities upgrades. The town plans to pay for those purchases with general revenues, not through borrowing, Ellsworth said.

Town Council Chairman Gerald McPherson Sr. described the budget proposal as “bare bones.”

“There is no meat left on the bone,” he said.

Town Meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on May 20 in the third floor auditorium in Town Hall. Check in begins at 6 p.m. Residents can vote to amend the budget down at that meeting, but they can’t increase it.